


inaccessible realms

by LostOnMyRoad



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Dimension Travel, Gen, Healing Power of Friendship!, Maybe - Freeform, Parker Luck, Peter has a lot of friends, Precious Peter Parker, and like I said Peter has a lot of friends, because its me, but its ok because of the, the tags on this thing might get pretty insane ha, this fic should get pretty happpy actually, this is my vent fic about all my spiderman feels, what else do you expect, why isn't that a tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-09-12 12:44:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16873158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostOnMyRoad/pseuds/LostOnMyRoad
Summary: Peter ends up in a world that doesn’t have him anymore. It has Gwen, and the whole world knows Peter Parker is Spider-man. They know his face. So, he lives in the shadows. But he keeps running into familiar faces.Or, the one in which Peter runs into old friends, new friends, and old enemies. In a different dimension. (Based loosely off of Spider-Men)





	1. a world awash with colors unseen

**Author's Note:**

> This is somewhat loosely based on the story where Peter falls into Miles's dimension, except everything after the initial premise is very very different. It's one of my favorite spiderman stories, so I hope you enjoy!

He goes through a portal and wakes up in a world with him dead, Gwen alive, and a world that knows that underneath Spiderman’s mask is twenty-year-old Peter Parker. He wakes up in his new life sprawled against one of New York’s many alleyways, meets this universe’s version of Spiderman, and watches Nick Fury apologize. Nick Fury. Apologize. But the portal to take him home never appears. So, he stares at Miles Morales (spider boy. Spider kid. Whatever) and Nick Fury as they stare back. 

“There was supposed to be another portal,” Fury says. 

“I guess I’m stuck here,” Peter sighs. “Do you guys have a J. Jonah Jameson?” He needs a job after all. 

They stare at him, and he feels something click inside him, feels the hole that Gwen left fill a little, mend the cracks. He never thought that seeing Fury would make him feel warm inside. It usually ended in explosions and Peter’s special brand of embarrassment, known as utter humiliation. 

Somehow, Peter manages to get a job at a café. The owner’s lost her glasses, and her vision is blurry enough that she doesn’t recognize him as Peter Parker, the twenty-something spiderling who died six months ago. God, that will never stop sounding weird. He wears one of those cough masks to work, and blue contacts, and somehow the disguise holds. Peter wants to rip a hole in the time space continuum, so he can tell his Nick Fury that he can, in fact, do incognito. 

He can’t get a job with Jameson for obvious reasons, the most problematic being that he’s supposed to be dead and asking his former employer for his old job back is probably going to end in a spectacular disaster. It’s still jarring though, to see that Jonah had called him a good guy. A hero. And all it took was dying. 

It really says something that the least weird part of this all is Miles. His legacy. He likes him, all easy smiles and teenage awkwardness. They work together and build him a new suit, something that isn’t Spiderman but is still him. He patrols when he’s not working the café, where Miles will come and order a drink that Peter will inevitably decide is on the house. 

M.J. finds him first. She enters the café, where he and Miles both work now because Miles has charmed the owner into giving him a job. He knows she’ll recognize him instantly. So, Peter steps into kitchen and pretends to be taking inventory. He snags Miles by the elbow when he walks by with her order though. He gestures wildly to the cookies he’s holding. They’re little holiday cookies, different flavors according to color. 

“M.J like the green ones,” he manages. Miles gives him a grin, then replaces the red cookies.

She finds him for real a week later when he saves her from a mugger. He makes the mistake of asking her if she’s all right. She immediately grabs him by the collar.

“Peter,” she whispers. “Is that you?”

He can’t hide the sharp intake of breath and the flinch. He should have remembered she would recognize him by voice. She tightens her grip. “Peter Benjamin Parker, where have you—”  
He cuts her off by wrenching himself out of her grip and swinging away as fast as he possibly can. He can hear her yelling his name, but he doesn’t stop. 

Harry is next. It’s again, purely by accident, because apparently the Parker Luck can cross universes. He saves Harry from some jerk in a vulture costume, and wow, he was wrong when he thought his life couldn’t get weirder. The guy (girl? Bird? Creature? Heck if he knows) manages to hook his claws into the fold of his mask and yank it half off. Peter manages to shove it back on while roundhouse kicking the guy through a window, but it’s too late. Harry is already gaping at him.

Peter leaps off the building and tries to get as far away as possible from this disaster waiting to happen. He ends up on the top of some fading motel, with a neon sign that’s missing half its letters. He’s not prepared for a familiar voice to start cursing him out. 

Harry is standing there, half illuminated by the sparking pink neon of the sign, panting.  
“Oh,” Peter breathes, “Oh. You shouldn’t have followed me.”

“You never make things easy for me,” Harry wheezes. “Do you? So M.J. wasn’t going crazy.”

Harry attempts to stop wheezing and finally gives up, collapsing on him so that Peter’s supporting his weight. His suit jacket had come off at some point, and his dress shirt is clinging to him because of the sweat. 

“You bastard,” Harry manages once he has enough breath to breathe, “you bastard.” And then he doesn’t say anything for a while. He’s shifted so that they are shoulder to shoulder, still on the high-rise overlooking New York. 

It’s an hour before either of them speak again. 

“I have to go,” he manages. “I have to go, Harry.”

Harry sighs. “I know you do. But if you think this is the last time I’m seeing you you’re wrong.” He pushes a slip of paper into Peter’s hands. Peter tucks it into his pocket and jumps of the side of the motel. Later, when he’s at his new apartment, he opens it. It’s Harry’s number, and a little message. I missed you.

He wonders if he’ll find Aunt May. He doesn’t look for her. He never can bring himself to find her.

He does look for Johnny though. He wants to know what the Johnny Storm of this universe is like. Peter watches his television interviews and joins the spectators in the street when the Human Torch battles New York’s supervillains. One night when he’s watching older interviews (six-month-old interviews, and he has just died, and this isn’t strange and wrong at all) and he finds the ones about him.  
“He was my pal, you know?” Johnny says on screen, looking defeated. “He was the best. As Peter Parker, or as Spiderman, he is someone I am proud to call my friend.” There’s a pause while Johnny tries to get his voice under control. “I’d like to wish him the very best, wherever he is right now.” A tearful smile to the camera, and then Johnny gets out of the seat and the screen goes dark. Peter rubs at his own tears. 

When he’d lost Johnny, he’d been crushed. But his Johnny had come back. A little broken and a little less whole, but still Johnny. This Johnny’s Peter isn’t coming back. 

As far as other superheroes go, none of them seem to have recognized him yet. Not that he would expect them to. He’s never been that close with any of them. Black Widow seems to know something’s up though. Natasha follows him once or twice when he’s on patrol. He loses her eventually. Other than that, no one bothers with the new (old) vigilante on the streets.

Gwen finds him last. God, she looks so young, so vibrant, and so alive. More alive than Peter probably looks. He’s been trying to stop the blood flow from his side for an hour, but the webbing isn’t holding anymore. Gwen’s face appears above his. Peter belatedly remembers he took the mask off. He can see the stars, and the worn-out bricks of the alleyway, and a dead girl. He tells her as much.

“You’re dead,” he slurs when she starts crying as she pulls out her phone. “This isn’t right.”

Gwen kneels beside him. Peter barely hears her soft whisper of “You’re dead too.” Then even quieter “Harry was right.” She manages to dial Harry’s number with shaking fingers, and then strokes his hair until he passes out.


	2. invisible foundations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwen speaks up from where she’s been sitting in the corner. “So, you discover you’re dead in this world, and your first instinct is to go back to patrolling?” She’s still got tear stains on her cheeks, but her glare is bold and defiant. If there’s one thing Peter loves about his friends, it’s their ability to bounce back from almost anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for your support on this story y'all!

“When I said this isn’t the last time I’m seeing you, I didn’t mean that the next time I saw you should be the last,” Harry says as soon as Peter wakes up. “Like I said, you never make things easy for me.”

He’s lying on a couch, in what he assumes to be Harry’s apartment. It’s too fancy to belong to Gwen and too tidy to belong to M.J. He’s in his new costume, still, but the mask is still off. His phone is on the table, and he can see that he’s got seven missed calls from Miles and twenty texts, all of which are variations of “where r u???”

He texts back a quick “I’m fine, just got caught up in something” and then puts the phone back on the coffee table.

He takes a quick look around the living room he’s in. There’s a couple of framed picture on the walls. A few of him, M.J., Harry, and Gwen all together, one of Flash grinning at the camera holding a basketball, and a candid of Johnny and Peter laughing. It makes his heart ache.

His head feels like it’s been hit by an anvil. Or a particularly powerful Goblin grenade. He glares at Harry until Gwen walks in with M.J. in tow. Something in his expression must twist, because all three of them sigh in unison.

They look so young. Peter must be at least half a decade older than them. He’s in his twenties, while they can’t be older than eighteen. It’s surprising, how young they had looked.

Peter sighs internally, because he never expected to get caught so quickly. Or see Gwen ever again. If he thinks about it too hard, he’s going to start crying. Or run away. M.J. hands him a cup of coffee, and then crosses her arms.

 “Are you Peter Parker?” she asks, and he knows she means business.

“Yes,” he manages. “But not yours.”

She’s on the verge of tears now.

“What does that mean?” she snaps. “You look just like him, you act just like him, by which I mean you’re an idiot like him. If you’re not Peter Parker, then who are you?”

“I am Peter Parker.” M.J. looks like she might actually slap him now, so he quickly adds “from a different dimension.”

M.J. looks even more like she might slap him.

“I fell through a portal and got stuck here. The portal that was supposed to take me home never appeared.”

Gwen speaks up from where’s she’s been sitting in the corner. “So, you discover you’re dead in this world, and your first instinct is to go back to patrolling?” She’s still got tearstains on her cheeks, but her glare is bold and defiant. If there’s one thing Peter loves about his friends, it’s their ability to bounce back from almost anything.

He’s saved from answering by Harry, who says “And you didn’t come to us.”

Harry pauses, before continuing. “Are we not…close, in your world? Is there a reason you didn’t want to find us?”

Peter can feel his uncertainty, his confusion at a world in which the four of them don’t take on the world together. If only that world could be a reality. His universe is missing Gwen. This one was missing Peter. He takes a sip of the coffee.

“We were close. You were my best friends.”

Nobody misses his use of the past tense. Gwen’s hand tightens on the paper cup of coffee she’s holding, her grip so hard that Peter’s afraid it will crumple. For a second, he’s afraid she’ll start crying again. He doesn’t think he’d be able to take it.

M.J.’s already yelling at him though. “You don’t get to stop there! I mourned you, ok? I cried. I cried for you, my stupid friend, who couldn’t keep himself alive because he insisted on playing a hero. Who died because he put on a spandex, non-bullet proof suit every night to go fight muggers. You don’t get to stop there. What happened? I lost you once, and I don’t want to lose you again. Why didn’t you come to us?”

The silence after she finishes rings, the way it did after Gwen fell. The way it did after Ben fell.

It’s rare that he feels unbalanced. The sider bite gave him a sense of balance that isn’t humanely possible. However, sitting here across a girl who had mourned him, a dead girl, and a friend who had turned into an evil alter-ego, he remembers what vertigo feels like.

His voice sounds ragged when he begins again.

“I…I tried to save Gwen. You had a Green Goblin, right?” They nod, and Harry’s face tightens. “He...killed her.” It feels damning to say it out loud. He remembers Matt telling him that going to confession was freeing. Peter doesn’t agree. It feels like a trap, like a Goblin bomb, like a gunshot.

Gwen does end up crushing the cup she’s holding, although its empty. Her face doesn’t betray anything, but Peter can read her like the back of his hand. She’s shaking under their stares. He continues.

“Things only went downhill from there. Harry went off the deep end with the Goblin serum. I couldn’t save him either.” Another failure. Another gunshot.

“M.J. and I, we drifted apart. I guess we reminded each other too much about what we were missing.”

The whole sorry story is out, and Peter can’t help but wonder how his world had gone so wrong, so badly. Tragedy after tragedy and the only thing holding it together was spider webbing.

Harry’s gone white. He’s gotten far more than he bargained for when he asked the question. But Peter owes him the truth at the very least.

Nobody says anything for a moment. M.J. slowly walks over until she’s standing behind him and squeezes his shoulder. Which is good, because that means he can’t see her. Every time he looks at her all he can see is her counterpart from his universe superimposed over her features. Slightly older, a little calmer, but still full of the same spirit.

“That explains a lot, tiger.” M.J. says it softly, and she no longer seems angry.

Harry and Gwen share a look. Gwen looks down at her crushed cup before asking “Would you like to try again? We could do better, this time.”

Peter gives her a small smile before, nodding.

“Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always validation is appreciated! come message me on tumblr, i have the same username


	3. these dimensions that cannot be breached

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another old friend joins the reunion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god u guys im so sorry. its been months now, i didn't mean to stop working on this fic. updates should be more regular now *crosses fingers*

Things don’t go smoothly right away, but it’s so close. They mold around each other like a puzzle, filing their edges so that the pieces fit together.

He tells them that he’s renting an apartment, and naturally they all pile into M.J.’s beat up pickup truck to check it out. The M.J. of his world had a truck of the same model, but a different color. Huh.

Harry takes one look at the inside before telling him to grab his things. When Peter asks why, he rolls his eyes and shoves him towards the one cardboard box filled with his only possessions.

“You’re moving in with me,” he says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Peter looks back at the empty apartment. There’s nothing tying him to it. It’s lonely, dark, and forbidding. He turns back towards Harry.

“I clogged the kitchen sink with web fluid once. Still want me as a roommate?”

Harry smiles and nods. Gwen rolls her eyes in the background. “M.J.’s done worse,” she says. “And he still lets her come around.”

“I heard that!” M.J. yells from her truck, before honking. “Hurry up!”

So, Peter grins and piles everything into that one box, and they get back in M.J.’s pickup truck.

\----

He saves Flash from a mugger. He sets him on the ground and gets ready to disappear. No webs, because that would be too obvious. It’s weird, fighting without them, but Natasha had taught him enough that it wasn’t an issue. She’d tazed him every time he used his webs when she was training him, claiming he was too reliant on them. He’s pretty sure it was just an excuse, because she was a sadist.

Flash gives him a strange look. God, he’s so young.

Flash narrows his eyes and looks him up and down. Just when Peter is thoroughly weirded out, Flash sighs.

“You move like him, you know. Got the same style.” Peter freezes. Flash doesn’t say who ‘him’ is, but Peter knows in his bones. Apparently, his friends were more observant than they let on. Or maybe this universe was different. (He gets the feeling its scenario #1.)

Flash opens his mouth like he’s going to say something else, and then just stops. “Good luck,” he says instead.

Peter melts into the shadows like Black Widow had taught him, heart going a million miles per hour, jackhammering in his chest.

It turns out that the four of them suck at stealth (so Fury was right, maybe he needs to work on incognito) because Flash finds him anyway.

He knocks on the door one night, and MJ and Gwen freeze. Harry, oblivious, goes to open it. Apparently, he’s already forgotten he’s harboring a supposed-to-be-dead-vigilante-from-another-universe. Because he’s Harry.

Flash walks through the doorway, giving Harry a grin.

“It’s movie night,” Gwen whispers frantically. _Movie night,_ Peter mouths back at her, eyebrows raised. She rolls her eyes at him (it’s practically her superpower at this point).  She shoves him under the kitchen counter, but he’s not expecting it (where are you now, spider sense?), and he ends up sprawled on the ground in plain sight.

Flash drops the six-pack of coke he’s holding, but Peter manages to catch it before it reaches the ground. He sets it on the kitchen counter and turns to face Flash, who looks shaken.

“Flash,” he blurts out, and then just stops. Everything around them stops too. Harry seems to realize what exactly his faulty memory has led to and presses his lips together.

Flash reaches out and puts a hand on his chest and jerks it back when he makes contact. “You’re real,” he mutters, sounding dazed, like he’s hit his head. He meets Peter’s eyes. “So, it was you, on the street.”

Peter nods shakily. Gwen squeezes his shoulder from behind him. “We would have told you, Flash,” she says, sounding subdued. “Didn’t know when the right time would be or if there was even a right time.”

Flash rubs his eyes with the palms of his hands, sagging.

Peter doesn’t know how to fix this. He’d never been particularly close to Flash. Sure, they’d become friends eventually. After both of them had been knocked down a few pegs and learned to see through each other. Flash had fanboyed over Spider-man for years too. He’d been pissed when he’d uncovered the truth, but he got over it, like Peter when he found out Flash was Venom. He has no idea what this universe’s Flash has in store for him.

He takes another good look. This Flash hasn’t met Venom yet, and he’s younger, like all the counterparts from this universe.

Flash stops rubbing his eyes and gestures broadly at Peter. “So. You’re Peter.” He squints. “But not quite Peter.”

“Alternate dimension,” M.J. supplies. “He came in through a portal.” Flash doesn’t seem to be surprised. Then again, he lives in New York, where every week there’s a new supervillain. Peter suspects that by the time every New Yorker reached the age of ten they were immune to feeling surprised at the amount of weird shit that went down there.

“So, our Peter is still dead.” Flash says it bluntly, like it’s an everyday fact and not a minefield, drawing Peter’s attention back to him.

Harry flinches at that, but nods. Outwardly, Flash gives nothing away, but Peter can see the grief in his eyes. For someone who had once been his bully and now was begrudgingly his friend, he seemed to care more than Peter had ever thought he would.

Flash looks Peter up and down. “Spider-man and you still can’t hide from a civilian, huh.” He chuckles, and most of the weariness evaporates from his expression. Most of it. Some remains, and Peter isn’t surprised.

Still, he smiles back at Flash, who gives a deep sigh and hugs him, to his surprise. He looks kind of embarrassed after wards, and just kind of. Pats him on the shoulder and nods, before taking a coke can out of the pack he’d brought and collapsing onto the couch.

They all settle down to watch the movie.

Later, he and Flash are the only ones in the kitchen (the rest had fallen asleep on the couch). They were cleaning up the mess (M.J., the worst cook he had ever seen, had tried making popcorn. How do you even mess up popcorn?) and idly chatting, letting the conversation flow like the water from the sink where he was doing the dishes.

He tells Flash about how Gwen and M.J. had their own apartments, but they always seemed to be over. Flash hesitates when he says so and mentions off-hand that it was about a year ago that it started happening.

It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots. He died a year ago in this world, Gwen had told him. She’d died years ago in his, he’d responded. They’d stood there for a moment, unsure of how to continue. She’d smiled at him eventually, although it didn’t meet her eyes. She’d pulled him close, pressing her face into his chest.

“Let’s both try to make it this time,” she’d said softly, and he’d nodded before placing his chin on the top of her head and continuing to hold her.

In his head he’d been saying goodbye to old Gwen, the one who laughed at his dumb jokes (this one does too), the one who’d helped Spider-man fight Electro, the one who’d fallen off a clock tower at midnight and died along with part of her heart.

Hello, he’d told the new Gwen, in his mind.

There’s a lull in the current conversation, and Flash releases a deep breath.

“Finding out you were Spider-man after you died was a kick to the gut,” Flash says, eyes on the floor. Peter stays silent in response, because what do you say to a thing like that? He’s made the same mistake in multiple universes, and he didn’t have the words then and he doesn’t have them now.

Flash doesn’t bring it up again, and they continue cleaning, although the conversation is replaced by a somewhat uneasy silence. They spread a blanket over their sleeping friends, and Flash shrugs on his coat and heads to the doorway.

“I’m sorry,” Peter manages, before Flash crosses the threshold. Flash sighs deeply. He gives a quick nod and steps out into the night.

Peter locks the door and sags against it, letting his forehead rest on the cool wood. He closes his eyes and counts to ten. Then he joins the pile of people on the couch and falls asleep.

He wakes up the next morning to M.J.’s feet in his face and Harry’s face on his chest, and it’s the most at home he’s felt in ages.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More familiar faces will show up in upcoming chapters, I'm so excited to show them!
> 
> also, please give me criticism. leave a comment or hit me up on tumblr, I have the same username.

**Author's Note:**

> this chapter's title name, and the name of this fic are inspired by Russel Brand's Revolution
> 
> let me know what you think in the comments! pls any feedback is appreciated


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